


On the Fringes

by hyperlydian



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Feelings, M/M, Panties, Shenanigans, kris being an idiot, the term "gaping asshole"
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-20
Updated: 2014-08-20
Packaged: 2018-11-07 16:31:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11062824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyperlydian/pseuds/hyperlydian
Summary: There’s just something about Sehun that keeps Yifan on the edge of his seat.THIS STORY IS ABANDONED. I REPEAT,ABANDONED!!!!





	On the Fringes

**Author's Note:**

> THIS STORY IS ABANDONED. I REPEAT, **ABANDONED!!!!**
> 
> yes, i know, that makes it sound like i have left a beloved family pet out on the street, but i haven't. i am just never finishing this story. i would prefer if you all came up with your own ideas for how it should have ended and honestly, if you come crying to me about how this isn't finished, i will probably laugh at you because that is the kind of person i am -- which is to say that i am sorry it's not done, but not sorry enough to finish it now. just pretend this is one of those aff chaptered fics that will never update again. (mostly, i'm posting to get this out of my wip folder so i can stop opening it and staring at it sadly for hours like i am now and also because manda gave me sad puppy eyes through the internet).
> 
> ANYWAY, a long list of thank you's, bc this wip is like a year and a half old. to bubbles and buttercup for always being by the phone in case townsville needs saving, to thea for her unfaltering support for this story and of me ^^, and to all my good friends because holy fuck this thing is a year and a half old, i whined about this for over a year.
> 
> some music for the road — [pumpkin soup](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PShlGSY4Ees) by kate nash, or alternatively, sisqo's [the thong song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PuWDUsQvBg).

“What did our maknae do this time?” Baekhyun asks, through a mouthfull of half-chewed samgyeopsal.

Yifan blinks, poking himself in the cheek with his chopsticks and dropping a piece of meat on the table. “What?”

“Sehun. You’ve been staring at him since our food came.”

Sehun is sitting next to Chanyeol down on the other side of the table, fighting with him over the biggest piece of meat. He’d had a haircut earlier that day, changing his hair from silvery pink back to platinum blond, and it falls over of his forehead as he snatches the piece out of Chanyeol’s bowl and pops it into his mouth. Chanyeol sputters angrily as Sehun chews, licking the little bit of sauce off his lower lip and gloating.

He's not looking anywhere near Yifan's direction. Yifan swears it's on purpose.

“Staring? I’m not staring.” Yifan looks back down at his bowl of rice, ignoring Sehun and Chanyeol’s laughter as it mixes and drifts down the table. “I’m just tired. Glazed over. You know. Like a doughnut.” Yifan should really stop talking before he gives something away.

Baekhyun scoffs, shoving a napkin in Yifan’s face. “You’ve got sauce on your cheek, _duizhang_.”

Yifan rubs at the spot and scowls.

%

If it’s possible, Sehun’s mouth is even pinker than usual when Yifan pulls away for a moment, watching Sehun’s tongue lick out across his lips as he catches his breath. The back of his neck is still tingling from where Sehun had run his fingers as he walked past five minutes before on his way to the bathroom. Yifan had frozen in his seat at the touch, a secret signal for him to follow.

“So this is like, a regular thing we’re doing now?” Yifan’s mouth is throbbing, the bathroom tile cold against his shoulders, and Sehun’s fingers are fisted in the hem of his shirt, pulling their chests together. They really don’t have much time before the others notice they’re both gone.

Sehun presses a kiss to Yifan’s jaw, slipping one hand around to fit into the small of Yifan’s back. “Problem?” he says, breath hot against Yifan’s skin.

“No—I,” Yifan tries. Sehun works his way up to where his jaw meets his throat, and scrapes his teeth lightly. Something hot and familiar is curling in Yifan’s belly, like steam. He lifts a hand to thread through Sehun’s newly colored hair, letting the smooth strands slip through his fingers. “No.”

Sehun closes his eyes, tilting his head back into Yifan’s touch like a cat curving into a petting hand. His lips are shiny with their combined spit, and Yifan kisses him again, this time hard enough to make Sehun whimper a little against him, squirming in Yifan’s arms as though to get closer, as though they’re not on a time limit, and Yifan makes no move to stop him.

This, whatever it is, is most definitely A Problem.

%

This regular thing that Yifan and Sehun are doing now, the Kissing Thing, is pretty new.

When they had unofficially celebrated Sehun’s eighteenth birthday, a little party tacked on after their Chinese showcase so they could all be together as twelve before their debut and separate promotions started, Sehun’s hair had still been dark, glossy and ruffled from the other member’s hands. He’d pretended to pout and then laughed when they brought out the cake, snatching one of the strawberries off the top of it before Lu Han could even put it down, eyes bright and sparkling. He’d looked _young_ , just a kid to Yifan’s eyes. It was hard to believe he was turning eighteen.

Over that first year, though, it’s like someone presses fast-forward on Yifan’s clock, making him age twice as fast, through the blur of debut and the seemingly endless period that stretches out after, performing the same song over and over as though nothing is changing.

M’s travel schedule is hard, the traumatizing chaos of the fans at the airports becoming almost routine, and Yifan has these moments where he’ll be sitting in a chair somewhere, the feeling of something being off crawling up his spine, when he realizes that what’s missing is the press of a too-close airline seat against his knees. The K members have it hard in a different way, performance after performance, nothing but MAMA for months, until Kyungsoo’s teeth clench so hard the muscles in his jaw twitch whenever he hears the opening choir.

With twelve boys, men, all together, constantly under pressure and on the brink of exhaustion, it only makes sense that they would grate against each other. Even through the haze of his own personal problems and his three-month absence, Yifan watches how the members break and then stitch themselves and each other back up again. The line between coworkers and friends and family fuzzing in and out of focus as they all find different ways to deal.

By the time Sehun’s birthday rolls around again, they’ve all grown up. Sehun’s hair is a dusky pink then, shoved under a cap because he’d been too tired to shower that morning, white tank top hanging off his collar bones during practice. When they’re done for the night, shrugging on the sweatshirts they’d shed earlier, Yifan finds himself looking at the pull of Sehun’s shoulder muscles, the long slope of his neck as he stretches.

Sehun still acts like a kid most of the time, both on camera and off, but out of all of them, he’s probably the one that’s grown up the most.

Yifan’s realization that Sehun isn’t such a child anymore doesn’t change much. They’ve never been friends, despite all of Yifan’s efforts, and it only makes sense that he wouldn’t notice the little things until they were all lumped into one dorm together.

It’s strange, though. They all have their ways of coping — Chanyeol’s developed this habit of chatting up his own reflection, not even caring if Yifan is in the bathroom too, ordering and reordering his bottles of skin products to help soothe his nerves, and Baekhyun talks about his quest to smack every ass in Exo onstage over dinner while Minseok pulls on a pair of yellow rubber gloves and cleans every dish twice, just in case. But Sehun…

Even after living in the same dorm for a few months, working together through comeback promotions and a repackage, from spring through summer, to fall, Yifan has no idea what Sehun’s coping mechanism is.

One night in September, close to Jongdae’s birthday, Yifan is deliriously tired, dragging his feet while he walks to the kitchen of the dorm for a glass of water before trying to get a few hours of sleep. Sehun clears his throat from the doorway as Yifan puts the water bottle back in the refrigerator, full cup cool in his hand.

“What are you doing still up?” Yifan asks. Sehun tries to flatten his hair with a hand where it’s sticking up in the back. He looks really cute all rumpled with sleep.

“Lu Han and I fell asleep watching a movie on his computer.” Sehun’s blond hair refuses to lie flat and Yifan laughs at Sehun’s pout, walking over to shut off the kitchen light. Sehun looks up at him as he gets closer, cheeks sleepily flushed. He’s still shorter than Yifan, but he’s definitely growing.

Light from the kitchen is catches on the planes of Sehun’s face, the lines of his nose and jaw, the pink of his mouth and cheeks. The thought drifts through Yifan’s mind before he even has a chance to stop it: not cute, something more than that. Something that’s been growing, weighing like a hot stone in his chest.

Yifan is so exhausted the thoughts are passing single-file through his brain, like blood cells through a vein, and his mouth is painfully dry from mouthing words for hours as he worked through his language textbooks. “You should go back to your own room, try and get some rest.”

Sehun doesn’t respond, eyes caught on some random point on Yifan’s face. His stare makes Yifan feel clumsy and very unleader-like. To compensate, he tries to do too many things, attempting to blink, take a sip of water, and reach for the light switch with his free hand all at the same time, and his exhausted brain overloads, causing him to stumble and knock shoulders with Sehun.

“Sorry,” he gets out, water slopping over the edge of the cup and onto his and Sehun’s shirts. Sehun reaches to steady him, hand catching his elbow.

“I think you’re the one that needs sleep,” Sehun says. His palm is really warm compared to the cold water seeping through his shirt. Yifan shivers.

“Yeah,” Yifan laughs at himself quietly, “I’m on autopilot right now.”

And then Sehun is leaning up, hand tightening on Yifan’s arm, and kissing him on the mouth. His lips feel even warmer than his hand, and Sehun uses his new height to press Yifan up against the doorframe, tilting their mouths together with a hand on Yifan’s chin. Yifan lets out a sound without his brain’s permission, almost like a sigh, and just lets it happen.

Sehun breathes back at him, the exhale brushing Yifan’s cheeks as he shifts to slip his tongue inside, and carefully licks the inside of Yifan’s mouth, the backs of his teeth, the sensitive insides of his cheeks.

Yifan feels dazed, blinking his eyes rapidly back to focus when he pulls back. Sehun isn’t the best kisser, lips clumsy and mouth stale with sleep, but there’s something meticulous about it, a thoroughness that has electricity zinging all the way down to Yifan’s toes.

The hand disappears from his elbow. “Goodnight, hyung.”

Yifan thinks he must be really tired because Sehun just _kissed_ him and his brain is telling him he liked it.

Sehun’s gone before Yifan even absorbs what he’s said, and the rest of the water from the cup spills onto the floor as Yifan sags in the doorway after he hears the door click shut.

By the time November rolls around and he turns twenty-three, Yifan’s almost used to it. Or, he likes to _think_ he’s used to it, but really, it’s a little hard for him to get used to something he has no control over whatsoever. (It’s even harder to admit his lack of control to himself than it is to get used to it, but Yifan thinks things could be a lot worse and decides to keep his mouth shut.)

Sehun’s kind of made a habit of pressing him into walls and kissing him, though he likes it the other way around, too, when Yifan uses his size to box him in, and Yifan sometimes watches Sehun in show recordings, all long legs and wide shoulders and pale neck, and wonders when Sehun got so incredibly hot.

Maybe, Yifan thinks wildly one day, when Sehun is wearing a really stupid sweater and baseball cap at the airport, and their fans are screaming at them, pressing in too close, maybe it’s the famous that makes Sehun hot. It’s worked for lots of other famous people before.

On the plane, Sehun falls asleep on Jongin’s shoulder and drools a little, mouth gaping open grossly, and Yifan decides that it’s definitely because he’s famous, and not anything else.

%

It’s kind of weird, though, Yifan begins to realize, because, sure, they don’t get to see each other very often, and he’s pretty positive Sehun isn’t doing this Kissing Thing with anyone else (Yifan definitely isn’t), but things between them seem to be progressing slowly.

Not that Yifan is looking for things to progress, really. Much.

It’s just —

Yifan is twenty-three and has legions of people fawning over him (they all do) and yet, he can count the people he’s kissed on the fingers of one hand.

When Yifan had done this kind of Thing with another boy back in high school, they had definitely gotten to the hands-down-the-pants stage by now, and Sehun has improved at kissing — he’s even figured out that Yifan likes it when Sehun uses his teeth, tugging at the edge of his lips and then soothing them with his tongue — but whenever Yifan’s hands go anywhere near the waistband of Sehun’s pants, Sehun pulls away.

Like now: Sehun is under him, fingers threaded into Yifan’s hair, and Yifan thinks he’s probably gotten better at kissing too, because Sehun is making these little sounds, whimpers muffled by Yifan’s mouth, and he’s hard, hips jerking up against Yifan’s every time he shifts.

But then, when Yifan tries to slip his hand beneath top of Sehun’s jeans, Sehun shies back. He twists, using his new growth-spurt height to flip them over, and Yifan forgets where his hands were headed because Sehun is straddling him, fingers fisted in Yifan’s shirt for leverage and his head thrown back.

He looks incredible.

The friction of their pants is almost unbearable as Sehun rubs against him, and Sehun’s moaning, really moaning, high in the back of his throat.

His lips are so pink. Yifan wants to bite them, kiss them, see how they look around his cock, and the image of Sehun’s lips covered in Yifan’s come, tongue licking out to taste, has him coming with a groan into his own underwear.

Sehun’s fingernails dig in sharply through Yifan’s shirt and Yifan can feel everything; the jerk of Sehun’s dick, the hot spill of come. Sehun shuddering through the choked sounds of his orgasm.

He falls against Yifan’s chest, sweaty forehead nestling into the curve of Yifan’s neck. There’s something oddly peaceful about it, them lying there together now that their Kissing Thing has definitely leveled up, and it’s not until Sehun climbs off him that Yifan remembers the way Sehun had shied away, like someone trying to keep a secret.

%

Yifan doesn’t have a chance to confront Sehun about the whole pants secret thing for a while because preparations for the Gayo Daejuns keep them too busy to do anything more than trade lazy kisses in the bathroom when they pass each other in the morning and evening. It’s almost January by the time Yifan gets Sehun squirming under him again, and Yifan wonders if maybe SM puts something in their water, because Sehun has somehow gotten even more attractive since the last time Yifan saw him up close.

He’s let Yifan strip their shirts off, the curve of his waist warm beneath Yifan’s fingers, and Sehun pulls Yifan closer with palms flat to his shoulder blades. Yifan can’t remember why he thought this was so complicated. Their hips are slotted against each other, legs tangled, and it’s only a matter of time before their pants get undone and Yifan can stop worrying that Sehun has an actual physical chastity belt hidden in his underwear.

He slides a hand over Sehun’s hip, fingering the top hem of his jeans, and Sehun goes motionless beneath him. Yifan freezes too, moving back as Sehun pushes him away so he can sit up.

They’re side-by-side on the bed, Sehun pulling his legs into his bare chest as though to shield himself. Yifan runs a hand through his already-mussed hair.

“Is it like…? You can be nervous. It’s okay. We can wait.” Yifan doesn’t sound like himself anymore. The voice coming out of his mouth belongs to “EXO-M’s _Duizhang_ Kris”, and it makes him cringe.

He doesn’t understand Sehun, doesn’t know what makes him tick or how he deals with the pressure they’re all under or what kind of secrets he might be hiding. Yifan and Sehun aren’t even really friends, not like Sehun is with Jongin or Lu Han or even Junmyeon, but there’s something vulnerable about Sehun’s eyes that Yifan hasn’t seen very often and he wants Sehun to know that he can be trusted. That whatever’s going on, it’s okay.

Sehun’s looking at him, lip caught between his teeth, like he’s standing at the edge of somewhere very high and deciding whether or not to jump.

Yifan reaches out a hand to touch Sehun’s shoulder, but changes his mind halfway there, letting it fall uselessly into his lap because Sehun has curled himself up kind of small and doesn’t look like he wants to be touched right now.

“Whatever it is,” Yifan says, and he’s himself again, the part that’s a little camera-shy and probably too kind for his own good, “you can tell me.”

“Okay,” Sehun says, more to himself than anything as he unfolds from his huddled position and stands. Yifan tries to stand too, but Sehun stops him. “Just—stay there. I need to show you something.”

“What, you need to show me the deep, dark secret in your pants?” Yifan jokes, trying to lighten the heavy atmosphere, but the laughter dies in his throat when Sehun starts unbuckling his belt. The sound of his zipper is loud in the room, and it seems like Sehun shoves his jeans down his legs as fast as possible, before he has a chance to change his mind. He steps out of them, kicking them out of the way, and Yifan’s eyes widen.

It’s _almost_ funny, because Yifan has spent a lot of time thinking of what the _deep, dark secret in Sehun’s pants_ could be — anything from a simple case of nerves to the worst case scenario, like a hairy dick or something — except it’s not funny at all, because Sehun seems really nervous and he’s standing there wearing a pair of women’s underwear.

“Oh,” Yifan says, mouth working on autopilot. “That’s…”

“Not what you thought?” Sehun finishes, voice small as he fidgets. He’s looking anywhere but at Yifan.

Most of Yifan is more interested in the fact that Sehun is nearly naked, the pale skin of his thighs finally out in the open, to be bothered with the fact that there’s a pair of lavender panties cradling Sehun’s junk, and so he’s having a hard time thinking of how he should respond.

“Weird,” Yifan’s mouth finishes, and it definitely didn’t ask for permission that time. Yifan pieces his brain back together when Sehun flushes bright red, bending to snatch his jeans up off the floor. “I mean—“

“I know what you meant,” Sehun says, slipping his pants on leg-by-leg, and Yifan could kick himself because Sehun sounds _pissed_. He opens his mouth, hoping to somehow magically say the right thing and stop Sehun from leaving so they can talk about this, but Sehun cuts him off. “Don’t even bother,” he snaps, face still flushed with embarrassment, and leaves without even bothering to grab his shirt.

Yifan sits there on the bed for what is probably a long time, until he realizes that the desk across from him has pictures of Junmyeon with his family on it, and this isn’t even his room.

He tugs on his shirt, the image of Sehun half-naked flashing through his mind again, and ends up so distracted that he bumps his shoulder hard on the doorframe on his way out.

%

Surprisingly, it’s Chanyeol that brings it up.

“It’s you,” he says, “so, I’m kind of assuming that whatever it was, you didn’t do it on purpose, and you don’t even know what it was that you did that was so dickish.”

They’re in Beijing for an award ceremony, and Chanyeol had muscled his way into Yifan and Zitao’s hotel room earlier that evening, saying that Zitao had already commandeered Baekhyun for drama-watching and he and Yifan haven’t hung out in forever.

Chanyeol’s version of “hanging out” is a lot of lying around with their heads hanging over the edge of the bed, while Chanyeol wiggles his toes in the air to the beat of the music blasting from his earbud. The other bud is in Yifan’s ear and he misses hanging out with Chanyeol, but the blood is all rushing to his head, Chanyeol’s had this same song on repeat for the last half hour, and Sehun hasn’t even looked in his direction for days, so Yifan’s heart really isn’t in it.

“Well, I didn’t _mean_ to do it, but I think I kinda… did something.”

Chanyeol’s toes stop wiggling and he sits up, the sudden movement tugging the headphone out of Yifan’s ear.

“You did what?”

“‘Did’ is a bit strong.” Yifan sits up too, shifting awkwardly on the bed. “It’s more like I said something. I think.”

“Doing dickish things to Sehun?” Chanyeol says, pointing at Yifan accusingly. “And you’re wearing glasses! I never knew you had glasses! It’s like I don’t even know you anymore!”

“I don’t — These glasses are fake!” Suspiciously, Chanyeol leans forward, and pushes his finger through the open frames. Yifan sighs, “Chanyeol, you are actually about to poke out my eye.”

Chanyeol grabs the glasses off Yifan’s nose and puts them on. Looking in the mirror across the bed, he says smugly, “These look way better on me.” Yifan rolls his eyes and Chanyeol crinkles his nose at him in their reflection. “ _Anyway_ , whatever you did — “

“Said,“ Yifan interjects dully.

“ — you should probably apologize.”

Yifan slumps back down onto the bed. “I would, if I could figure out how.”

“Sehun’s actually not that complicated most of the time,” Chanyeol says, flopping down next to Yifan. Yifan disagrees with that, but before he can say so, Chanyeol jabs him in the ribs with a finger. “Just say you’re sorry?”

Yifan grunts. Sehun hasn’t looked at him in a week, and it’s not like they’re dating or something, this whole thing is just a…Thing, but Yifan kind of hates it — hates that his shoulders somehow feel a little heavier without the weight of Sehun’s stare. “Maybe.”

“Do it soon,” Chanyeol says, and swings his arm into Yifan, smacking him in the stomach, “because Sehun’s kind of a gaping asshole when he’s irritated.”

%

The thing about Sehun Yifan is slowly beginning to understand is that even though Sehun puts up a stoic front, it’s mostly because he sometimes hates being the maknae and having to bear the brunt of the rest of the group’s teasing. Under that hard shell, though, Yifan’s thinks Sehun’s insides are soft, easily bruised, and while he’s ignoring Yifan, the way he looks when he sits by himself sometimes, tiny frown on his face, makes Yifan realize that Sehun isn’t angry at him anymore, probably just hurt

— which Yifan totally gets _now_ , because once he’s thought about it, calling someone weird right after they’ve just revealed a big secret to you is a really stupid and asshole-ish thing to do.

Yifan is an asshole. This is not a new self-discovery.

When they get back to the hotel after the ceremony, Chanyeol latches onto Zitao, dragging him off and chattering away about some kind of game he and Baekhyun had invented earlier involving the hotel room balcony and bars of free soap (Yifan doesn’t think he really wants to know), and Yifan is left standing like an idiot in the lobby waiting for Sehun to finish his conversation with Lu Han.

Luckily, Lu Han catches Yifan’s eye over Sehun’ shoulder and connects the dots fairly quickly.

“Yixing!” he calls, patting Sehun on the shoulder as he brushes past to catch up with their bandmate. Sehun turns to watch him go, but when he catches sight of Yifan behind him, his face hardens.

“Sehun — “ Yifan tries, but Sehun stalks off towards the bank of elevators as though he hadn’t heard.

Yifan sighs and follows, longer legs letting him catch up just as Sehun tries to slip into an empty elevator at the end of the bank. He stops it with an arm between the closing doors. Sehun looks at him with that tiny frown, but at least Sehun is _looking_ at him.

He stands next to Sehun, who moves away under the pretense of pressing the button for their floor.

Yifan opens his mouth to try to apologize again, but Sehun cuts him off. “Don’t.”

The elevator dings a few floors up, and a couple gets on, standing between he and Sehun. Yifan is taller than them both, so he can see Sehun over their heads as they speak quietly with each other, not seeming to notice the tension pulling tighter between them as Sehun’s frown deepens. Sehun has his lips pressed thin, staring straight ahead at the elevator doors, and when they open just a few floors later, he ducks out, almost too quickly for Yifan to follow.

Yifan reaches out to try and catch Sehun by the elbow as the doors close behind them. “Sehun, would you just let me — “

“Let you what?” Sehun stops abruptly, making Yifan stumble as he tries to avoid running headlong into Sehun’s back. “Call me a freak again?”

Sehun’s voice is too loud for the hotel hallway. Yifan knows most of the rooms are filled with their bandmates, but even though Sehun is obviously angry, he’s sure he wouldn’t want someone else overhearing this conversation.

He grabs Sehun’s wrist and tugs him down a few doors. Sehun sputters, protesting. “Get off! You can’t drag me around and expect — “

Yifan pulls his keycard out of his pocket and fumbles with the door to his and Zitao’s room. “Just — hang on for a second.”

Sehun is still swearing at him when Yifan tugs him through the doorway and lets the door click shut behind them, locking the deadbolt for good measure. “ — manhandle me into your room like some fucking asshole from a drama.” He wretches his arm out of Yifan’s grip and stalks into the room. “Fine,” he says, crossing his arms and turning around, “Say whatever you need to so I can go. I’m tired.”

Even though they’d all changed out of their performance outfits, they both still have their hair gelled up, back from their foreheads. The style makes Sehun look older, especially with his hair dark again, the lines of his cheekbones and jaw laid bare.

Yifan swallows. He’s been rehearsing this in his head for the last week, but now the words seem stuck in his throat. “I didn’t mean it, when I said that it was…”

“Weird,” Sehun finishes for him, the word out of his mouth so swiftly that Yifan wonders if he’s been repeating it to himself ever since Yifan said it. The very idea makes Yifan feel even worse.

And just like Yifan thought, the angry mask is slipping, Sehun’s voice is a little smaller, a little sadder, and Yifan’s chest tightens because it’s his fault.

“Yeah. That.” His mouth is dry, and Sehun still doesn’t look like he believes him. “I didn’t mean it. I was just surprised. I’m sorry.”

Yifan takes a step towards Sehun, hesitant, because Sehun looks like he’s standing on the edge of that cliff again and Yifan doesn’t want to scare him away.

“If you like, um,” Yifan says, voice cracking slightly, like Yifan is sixteen and going through the world’s most intense puberty in history again, and Sehun looks like he might want to laugh. “If you like it, it’s not weird to me.”

Sehun’s jaw drops a little, as though he wasn’t expecting that. “Oh.”

Taking another couple steps forward, Yifan decides to push his luck a little. “Are you wearing some right now?”

Sehun shifts awkwardly, eyes flicking down to the hotel room carpet. Yifan takes that as a yes, but he wants Sehun to say it. Sehun’s let him in on one of his secrets, and that this time, Yifan wants to be able to say the right thing. “Are you?”

“Yes,” Sehun mumbles, still studying the floor, and his cheeks are pink, teeth worrying at his lower lip. Yifan is standing close enough now that he can tell it’s a different kind of nervousness than before, the hurt dissolving slowly into the air between them.

Reaching out to tug on the hem of Sehun’s cardigan, Yifan smiles down at Sehun’s head. “Hey,” he says, waiting for Sehun to look back up at him. When he does, Yifan realizes he doesn’t have very far to crane his neck, and someday, maybe, Sehun will be as tall as him. “That’s okay,” Yifan breathes, because it is, and it’s like the tension suddenly drains out of Sehun’s shoulders.

Yifan kind of likes the idea of them being eye-to-eye one day, and really, their heights don’t matter much because even if Yifan is taller now, even if he’s the hyung, he likes it when Sehun is the one that pulls their faces close and presses their lips together. Like now, when Sehun reaches up, and kisses him, closed-mouthed and almost sweet, except that his fingers are running through Yifan’s hair, undoing the gel until it’s all unmolded and probably looks ridiculous.

Yifan doesn’t really care, surprisingly. He’s a little vain, he’ll admit, but he’s also missed the rounded shape of Sehun’s mouth, and the little breaths he takes as their lips shift together, just on the edge of making a sound.

He loses himself in it a bit, kissing Sehun, being kissed _by_ Sehun, so when Sehun shoves at him a little, the backs of his knees hit the edge of the bed, and Yifan stumbles, his hold on Sehun the only thing that keeps him from sprawling back across the bed.

Instead, he ends up with Sehun in his lap, knees on either side of Yifan’s thighs allowing him to rise above Yifan and tilt his face up so he can lap at the roof of Yifan’s mouth and rub their crotches together. Sehun pulls back slightly, chest heaving and brushing against Yifan’s, and when Yifan opens his eyes, he thinks he might like this too, the way Sehun looks above him, breath hot and shuddering between their lips.

Slowly, Yifan lifts a hand from where it’s fallen to rest on Sehun’s thigh, and moves it to the small of Sehun’s back. Sehun arches into it, grinding down with his hands on Yifan’s shoulders. The skin under Sehun’s shirt is warm and soft. Yifan can feel the bumps of Sehun’s spine, and he follows them down past the top of Sehun’s pants for the first time.

The fabric of the panties is lacy, delicately textured under Yifan’s fingers, and Sehun lets his head fall back, exposing his throat. Yifan licks along the tendon that runs the length of it and pushes his hand further down Sehun’s pants, until he has a whole handful of Sehun’s ass. He can feel where the panties end, lacy edge under his fingers as he squeezes, and Sehun squeezes too, fingernails digging into Yifan’s shoulders. He moans loudly in Yifan’s ear.

Yifan likes how the curve of Sehun’s butt feels in the underwear. He wants to see what color they are and how they look against his skin again.

“Can I…?“ Yifan hasn’t released his handful of Sehun’s butt, and Sehun is pushing back into his hand.

“Can you what?” Sehun breathes, rolling his hips against Yifan’s. He’s hard, and Yifan’s skin feels hot. He tries to undo the button on Sehun’s pants but his right hand is still busy down the back of Sehun’s pants, making him clumsy. Sehun smacks his hand away, undoing them himself.

The panties are blue this time, cobalt, with a scalloped edge that runs underneath the skin of Sehun’s belly and the head of his cock looks pretty and pink through the gaps in the dark lace. Yifan wants to touch, and Sehun arches even further when Yifan pushes his shirt up and out of the way to mouth at his nipples.

Sehun hisses between clenched teeth when Yifan finally touches his cock. It’s hot in his palm, bigger than Yifan expected, and Sehun is even more gorgeous like this than he remembers. He’s thrusting up into Yifan’s hand, pretty throat swallowing around these little sounds, and finally he gets out, “Fuck, hyung, your hands. Your fucking _huge hands_.”

Yifan gets a better grip, pushing the panties out of the way so he can touch the hot surface of Sehun’s dick. It feels amazing, and the way Sehun is looking at him, lashes fluttering as he gasps and bites at his lips, is amazing to, because it’s because of him.

Yifan’s been hearing about his enormous hands ever since his teen years, big enough to palm basketballs and history classroom globes, but he’s never been really as thankful for them as he is now, fingers pumping Sehun and catching the little beads of precome welling at the tip of his cock and wetting each slide. Every noise Sehun makes, every shift of his pelvis is a spike of heat beginning to boil in Yifan’s stomach. He’s close, and the way Sehun’s cock is swelling in Yifan’s hand, muscles of his stomach trembling, Yifan thinks Sehun is too.

“You’re so — “ Yifan grunts, feeling his balls tighten, and it’s too soon, much too soon, but, “You’re so hot, I — “

One long pull, a rub against that spot underneath the head of Sehun’s cock, and Sehun comes into his palm, hot and wet. He moans and rolls his hips through it, and the face he makes, mouth falling open and tongue slick inside of his mouth, has Yifan coming too, embarrassingly in his pants.

His hands are shaking when Sehun moves again, reaching around Yifan’s shoulder to grab some tissues. The shame of having such an easy trigger is flushing his face, but Sehun only glances down at the wet patch in the front of Yifan’s jeans and smiles to himself, like he’s got another secret. He cleans Yifan’s hand carefully, running the tissue down every finger, and when he catches Yifan’s eye, Sehun leans forward and kisses him again. It’s not as chaste as the one a while ago, more comfortable than anything, and Yifan pulls Sehun in, lying back on the bed, and nibbles on his lips.

There’s no expectation, no next step, only the knowledge that Chanyeol and Baekhyun will keep Zitao busy for hours and no one will bother them. Yifan slips his hand down the back of Sehun’s pants again, spanning one side of his butt with a hand, and Sehun laughs a little against his mouth before putting his fingers through Yifan’s half-gelled hair again in revenge.

The fabric of the underwear feels nice against Yifan’s palm and he thinks that even if it’s not his thing, if Sehun likes it and wants to confide in him, this panty stuff might not be that big of a deal.

%

Sehun the trainee was someone Yifan never talked to very much, for a lot of reasons really: Sehun was younger, the distance of four years between them much wider than than it would feel later on, Yifan’s Korean (and Sehun’s Mandarin) still needed work, and neither of them are incredibly outgoing people.

They met through Chanyeol, Yifan’s particular friend from rapping class. Chanyeol had this stretched look to him back then, like most of the younger boys did, growth spurts tightening the skin over their bones too fast. Sehun was beginning to have much the same look when he and Yifan first met, the sullen, unimpressed face of a young teenager peeking out from underneath his fringe. He didn’t say much, more absorbed in his phone than in meeting Chanyeol’s friend Yifan, and Yifan would have felt offended, except that Chanyeol told him Sehun did that to everyone.

After a few months, Yifan actually hears Sehun talk and notices he has a lisp, just a tiny one that shows up on the edges of his words, and he wonders if maybe that’s why Sehun avoids talking a lot until he remembers that Sehun is in a _rapping_ class with him, and obviously doesn’t seem to care very much about it.

Other than that, their paths didn’t cross much, not until Exo gets slated for debut, and Yifan, now Kris, Exo-M’s _Duizhang_ , decides it’s his job to get friendly with all his future bandmates.

Sehun, he finds out, doesn’t really do “friendly”. He answers all of Yifan’s questions but never asks any back, and it’s not that he’s shy — Yifan sees him giggling with Jongin in the corner of the practice room and hears how he cutely cajoles Junmyeon, Chanyeol and Lu Han into giving him extra food at meals — it’s that he’s stand-offish, keeping most people (including Yifan) at arm’s length.

Yifan gets it, really, he does. He’d moved around enough as a kid to realize that having too many friends is a hazard, that having a few that know you well enough to trust with your secrets is safer, but sixteen-year-old Sehun seems kind of funny and cute in that dongsaeng way, and it’s not a big deal or anything, it’s not going to affect the band.

Yifan just thinks that the fact that he’s not one of Sehun’s chosen few kind of blows.

%

One of the things Yifan likes the most about messing around with Sehun is the look on his face when Yifan does something new. Sehun is nineteen and not very experienced, despite the fact that he’d had the balls to make the first move, and so when Yifan drops to his knees with Sehun pressed up against the doors of his and Jongdae’s closet, he takes a few seconds to savor the way Sehun’s eyes go as round as saucers, tongue licking out to wet his kiss-swollen lower lip.

He looks kind of nervous and it has this silly little tickle starting in Yifan’s chest, like bubbles overflowing the edges of a cup of soda. Yifan can feel the muscles of Sehun’s stomach jump under his fingers as he undoes the button of Sehun’s pants, pulling them down until he can press his palm against Sehun’s growing erection.

Another thing Yifan likes about this arrangement is Sehun’s cock. He likes the way it fits in his hand, the heavy, hot weight of it when it’s hard, the little noises Sehun makes when Yifan gets it just right, jerking him in fast, tight-fisted strokes. Honestly, he’s been wanting to get a closer look at it, because along with being pretty big, Yifan has the sneaking suspicion that Sehun’s cock might just be really, really nice.

The way that Sehun’s breath is shuddering in and out of his lungs makes Yifan pretty sure that Sehun’s never gotten a blow job before, and so he decides to take it slow. He cradles Sehun’s balls through soft light blue fabric, tonguing at the bones of his hips through the sheer panels on either side of his panties.

If he’s being honest with himself, Yifan likes this pair. They look pretty against Sehun’s skin, and the trail of dark hair that runs underneath his navel, and when he tugs Sehun’s jeans down a bit further, Yifan can see how they hug the tops of Sehun’s thighs with tiny, delicate frills of lace. Sehun is getting hard enough that his cock pulls the fabric out of place, and Yifan presses a kiss to the tip, just so he can feel Sehun shudder, a hand grabbing at Yifan’s shoulder to steady himself.

“Hyung — “ Sehun breathes and Yifan smiles to himself a little, leaning forward to run his nose along the length, his cheek and lips.

“Okay?” he asks, fingers curling and nails scraping at the skin of Sehun’s stomach, ready to pull the fabric out of the way.

Sehun nods, cheeks flushed. Yifan holds his eyes as he bares Sehun’s legs, dropping the jeans off somewhere to the side and pushing the undies down his thighs. Yifan isn’t exactly super experienced himself, but his Kissing-And-Whatever friend back in high school had always been more than eager for Yifan to blow him, said he liked the way Yifan’s small mouth looked stretched around his cock, so Yifan likes to think he knows how to make it look good, at least.

Sehun’s cock, pulsing in his hand, is definitely nice. The sound he makes is nice too, a choked groan as Yifan’s tongue wets the head before sliding the ring of his lips down and losing himself in the way Sehun is staring at him, eyes fluttering open and closed with each suck, like Yifan is something awe-inspiring, something transcendent.

Yeah, Yifan definitely likes this part.

The part that he doesn’t like is that apparently he’s not allowed to ask any questions. Not for lack of trying, though.

“Why?” Yifan asks, afterwards. Somewhere in the middle of everything, they’d made it to the bed and Yifan had lost his pants. And shirt. Sehun is lying on top of his arm, post-orgasmically lazy, and Yifan would push him off, because his body weight is cutting off the circulation to his fingers, if Sehun didn’t look so satisfied.

“Why what?”

Yifan runs the fingertips of his free hand along the lacy top of Sehun’s underwear in lieu of an answer. Sehun tenses up next to him.

Sitting upright, he tugs the blue undies back up over his softened dick, and the set of his shoulders makes it clear to Yifan that the wall is up again. Sehun is shutting him out. “Does it matter?”

Clenching and unclenching his fingers to get the blood flowing in them again, Yifan shrugs and says, “Not really, I guess. I just wondered.”

“Well don’t.” Sehun climbs over him and is pulling on his clothes before Yifan can even think. He grasps over the edge of the bed for his boxers because for some reason, he feels like he’s really screwing this up again, and if that’s the case, Yifan would rather not be naked for it.

“Sehun, it’s not — “

“Just because you know about this doesn’t mean you get to question me like some circus freak,” Sehun practically snarls, tugging his shirt over his head.

“I don’t think you’re a freak. I told you before — ” Yifan has finally managed to get himself not-naked, sitting on the edge of the bed and watching Sehun search for his shoes. “I just thought, with what we’ve been doing, that that meant you trusted me — “

“Fuck this,” Sehun says, throwing on his sweatshirt. “If you find my shoes you can keep them.” He walks over to the door, and Yifan stands, wanting to go over and keep him from leaving, but Sehun’s hard eyes stop him in his tracks. “And what we just did — what we’ve been doing, means _nothing_.”

Sehun slams the door on his way out and the draft has goosebumps crawling up Yifan’s arms along with the shell-shock. He rubs at them with his hands to warm up, but even though Yifan’s got his pants on, he feels naked.

%

Sehun’s cold shoulder lasts for almost a month, until M is sent back to China for a week for some interviews and a magazine photoshoot, and so Yifan is left, as he’s sure Sehun probably intends, to ponder his sins

— whatever they are. Yifan is still working on figuring that out.

Honestly, if he’d ever thought about it, Yifan would have realized earlier that despite his bored front, Sehun is sensitive. Not like a child, even though sometimes he still tugs at his hyung’s sleeves and pouts when he doesn’t get what he wants. But Sehun is a teenager, not yet an adult, no matter how management and the industry might try to ignore that fact, and that means that Yifan, who hadn’t been much of a teenager in his day, has no idea what he’s done wrong.

“So,” Lu Han says, slipping into the van next to him, “I hear you pissed off Sehun. Again.”

Yifan grunts.

“What the fuck did you do this time?” Lu Han scoots closer, like invading Yifan’s personal space will make him answer the question. Yifan should be used to Lu Han’s doll-like mouth spewing foul language after years of sharing close quarters, but it still makes him frown.

“I didn’t _do_ anything,” Yifan grumbles, crossing his arms and hoping the threat of sharp elbows will keep Lu Han away.

It doesn’t, and Lu Han leans into him, smirking. “Well, Junmyeon said that Jongin said Sehun said he wouldn’t spit on you if you were on fire.”

“What — How does something like that even come up in conversation?”

Lu Han shrugs. “Baekhyun likes to make the rest of K play “Fuck, Marry, or Kill” with other idols during practice breaks.” Yifan chokes on absolutely nothing at the thought and Lu Han turns to him, smile so wide Yifan practically plasters himself to the van wall to get some distance. “Hey, can we start doing that?”

“No.”

“Aw, come on! It’ll be fun!”

“No.” It’s useless, of course, because Jongdae overheard the question and is already explaining how the game works to Zitao. The subgroup’s maknae is listening with wide eyes and Yifan puts his face into his hands, sighing.

“This is probably why Sehun is mad at you,” Lu Han says. “You’re no fun.”

“I didn’t even do anything!” Yifan finally explodes, and he’s lucky the others are busy arguing over which idols they’re allowed to use for the game, because his voice is loud enough to make Lu Han jump. He lets his hands drop into his lap and says more calmly, “I never do anything on purpose, he just gets pissed if I say or ask the wrong thing. I thought he trusted me.” His hair is falling into his eyes and Yifan shoves it back defeatedly. He wishes management would let him cut it. “We’ve known each other for years now, but I don’t even feel like we’re friends.”

“Ah.” Lu Han sits back, looking sympathetic. “Sehun… doesn’t make friends quickly. He’s been at SM a long time, seen a lot of people come and go.”

“So have I. So have Jongin and Junmyeon and most of the rest of us.”

Lu Han shrugs. “He was really young when he came to the company and, I don’t know, everyone is different.”

“Great,” Yifan groans, and Lu Han pats him consolingly on the shoulder.

“It’s okay, _duizhang_ , you don’t have to be friends with everyone.”

Yifan wants to tell Lu Han that it’s more than just wanting to be friends with Sehun, that the little noises Sehun makes when Yifan kisses his neck or runs his fingers over the waistband of Sehun’s panties make him feel a little strange, too near his heart to be lust and not painful enough to be a heart attack (probably), and that he kind of wants the fact that Sehun had trusted him with his secret, one that Yifan hadn’t even realized the sheer magnitude of until he thought back on how nervous Sehun had been when he had first showed him, to mean _something_.

Really, Yifan tells himself calmly, it’s just that he wants he and Sehun to be bros.

He must look really pathetic, because Lu Han pats him again, this time on his knee. “Sehun doesn’t give his trust to people easily. Even if he does, he’ll probably shut you out again once or twice. He has a hard time letting people in on his secrets — even people he likes.” Lu Han fiddles with the bag in his lap, thinking. “And that’s hard to tell, too, unless he wants something.”

“Sehun’s face kind of looks like a pug,” Yixing says randomly from the seat behind them, and Yifan jumps, wondering how long he’s been listening.

Lu Han cackles, pulling away from Yifan fully to join in with the others as they listen to Jongdae choose between Hyorin, Kim Taehee and Changmin sunbaenim. (Jongdae has always been a tits man, so his choice shocks absolutely no one.)

Yifan stares out the window the rest of the way back to the dorm, feeling only a little less hopeless than he was before. Maybe when they get back to Korea, Sehun will have forgotten what he was so pissed about in the first place.

%

“Ow! What the hec — “  
  
“Shut up.” Sehun might be the youngest of them all, but right now, he’s got Yifan shoved up against the wall in the hallway of their dorm, forearm pressed to his throat so that his head knocks painfully against the drywall, and Yifan shuts up.  
  
The rest of the band is crowded into the kitchen, talking loudly over each other as they shove food into their mouths. They won’t be missed.  
  
Sehun is studying his face and Yifan thinks he looks tired, cheeks a little more hollow than the last time he’d let Yifan get this close. He wonders what Sehun sees, because his eyes are fierce, but when he surges forward to kiss him, it’s so soft, just a brush of skin that leaves Yifan’s mouth tingling.  
  
Of course, Sehun’s arm is still across his collar bones, body weight holding Yifan to the wall. “I’m still mad at you,” Sehun says. “It’s just…”  
  
Yifan swallows. Sehun’s eyes flick down to watch his Adam’s apple, tongue coming out to wet his lips.  
  
“Yeah,” Yifan breathes. He wonders what color panties Sehun is wearing today, if they’re lace, or cotton. It’s been a long time since he got off with something other than his own hand, and Sehun can probably feel how his pulse is racing through his throat.  
  
“So — “ Yifan tries, and Sehun presses harder with his arm, cutting him off. A little thrill goes through Yifan that he doesn’t quite understand because Sehun still looks really pissed off.  
  
“I said, shut _up_.” Sehun releases him, but only so he can twist his hands into Yifan’s collar and drag him down the hall, into his room.  
  
The wood of the door hurts a little less to smack his head on, and Yifan really wants to be upset about all this possible head trauma, but this time Sehun’s using his hips to keep Yifan in place as he slips his tongue past Yifan’s lips and all his protests fly out of his head.  
  
Sehun doesn’t kiss like he has a secret to keep, his mouth falling open against Yifan’s easily, and now that they’ve had some practice together, kissing Sehun is something Yifan would happily spend a long time doing. Sehun’s fingers twist into the hair at the back of his head and Yifan uses the opportunity to slide his hand down the back of Sehun’s jeans. The panties are made of something slippery this time, though the lace of the waistband catches on his fingers. Sehun shivers in his arms.  
  
There’s that steam curling in the pit of Yifan’s stomach again, wet and hot, and Sehun steps back, away from Yifan’s hands. He’s panting, mouth pink and smirking.  
  
“Wanna see what color they are?” he asks, breathless and fumbling with the button of his pants.  
  
Yifan doesn’t answer — Sehun told him to shut up, after all — but his mouth goes dry because the mint green of Sehun’s underwear is bright and delicate under the black of his jeans as Sehun pulls them down, past his thighs, knees, calves, until Sehun’s legs are bare.  
  
Yifan presses his palms flat to the door to keep himself steady when Sehun comes towards him again and lets his knees hit the floor. Sehun’s hair is lighter now, smooth, with strands catching on his eyelashes as he looks up at Yifan.  
  
He makes fast work of Yifan’s pants and underwear, and Yifan can’t even believe his luck right now, Sehun wetting his mouth and letting his tongue loll out as he wraps a hand around the base of Yifan’s cock.  
  
His fingers are shaking a little, and Yifan realizes that Sehun’s probably never done this before. That thought, that he’s giving another first to Yifan. Another secret. It’s an act of trust, even if Sehun refuses to think of it that way, warms him almost as much as the slick heat of Sehun’s mouth. Yifan brushes the hair out of Sehun’s eyes, and when Sehun looks up again, something unnamed in his chest swells.  
  
%  
  
When the knowledge that what Sehun usually has under his pants isn’t the typical idol designer boxer-briefs is compounded with the fact that he’s pretty sure Sehun hasn’t told any of the others this particular secret, it puts an extra spring in Yifan’s step for a while.  
  
Sehun had said he was still angry (Yifan _thinks_ he might know what that was about now), but he has no problem sinking his teeth into Yifan’s lip, especially when he knows there’s going to be pictures taken later, or shoving Yifan’s hands into his own pants, and Yifan thinks there’s some trust in there somewhere — or at least there’s orgasms, anyway, and that’s better than nothing.  
  
Sehun wasn’t one of SM’s long-term trainees for nothing. He’s a fast learner, and soon, Sehun is giving the best head Yifan’s ever had (not that he’s gotten much, but wow). He’s adventurous too, mouthing down past Yifan’s balls to lick at his hole, pulling back to smirk when a groan slips out without Yifan’s permission.  
  
“That’s something I’d like to try,” Sehun murmurs, running his nose along Yifan’s cock, tip catching on the crown and making Yifan’s toes curl. “I want to try it the other way first, though.”  
  
And Yifan isn’t quite sure on the specifics, because his brain kind of shorts out when Sehun pulls a bottle of lube out from under Yifan’s mattress ( _how did he know that was there?_ ), but somehow he’s got Sehun under him, hands clutching at Yifan’s shoulders and choked sounds coming from his mouth as Yifan works him open, three fingers thrusting in and out of him sloppily as Yifan jerks him off.  
  
“I can’t wait to do this for real,” he says, voice low, into the skin of Sehun’s throat. The words are welling up, a dirty secret, a steaming thread of want that’s been building up inside of him for weeks, and he can’t stop it from pouring out. Sehun’s staring at him, eyes unfocused and teary, and he looks transfixed by what Yifan’s saying, so he says more. “I could do it right now, roll you over and slide my dick into you until you can’t even hold yourself up.”  
  
Sehun writhes, digs his fingernails in, and his body throbs in Yifan’s hands like he’s about to burst. Yifan had come earlier, but he files this moment away to fuel his wanking fantasies for at least the rest of his life. “You’d let me, wouldn’t you? You’d scream into the pillow that you didn’t want hyung to stop.”  
  
Crying out, Sehun comes over his own stomach, thighs straining and neck arching, and Yifan waits a few moments to slip his fingers out. When he does, Sehun sighs a little, shifting on the sheets of Yifan’s bed like the fabric itches. Yifan cleans them both off with some tissues, pulling the shirt Sehun had on gently down from where it was bunched up under his armpits.  
  
The underwear he’d been wearing, deep red-orange with single strips of lace spanning the sides, had been tossed who knows where, but rather than looking for it like usual, Sehun tugs at him, pulling Yifan until he’s draped over half of Sehun’s bare skin. “Cold,” Sehun mumbles, and Yifan reaches for the top-sheet to cover them both. “Also, never try talking dirty again. That was awful.”  
  
Yifan laughs, but he’s distracted by the way Sehun curls into his side, hand resting in the small of his back. “Whatever, you loved it.”  
  
There’s the ghost of a touch on his cheek and Yifan imagines it’s from Sehun’s lips, a little kiss in between scoffs. Sehun’s not big on touches that Mean Things, so Yifan tells himself to take it at face value, but staying pressed together like they are now is different and has those little coils of steam moving from his belly up to gather next to his heart.  
  
“Stop thinking and go to sleep,” Sehun says after a few minutes, and Yifan tenses, wondering for a horrifying moment if Sehun can read his mind. “The others won’t be back for hours, so quit fidgeting.” He shoves at Yifan with a foot, tangling their legs together even more. “Idiot.”  
  
Yifan lets himself relax again, drifting off to sleep to the rhythm of Sehun’s breathing and tries not to think about what this might mean.  
  
%  
  
Sehun’s got his leg pressed right up against Yifan’s as they ride in the van to the airport and it’s making him feel overheated. Sehun isn’t usually touchy with him like this when the others are around, fingertips absently tracing the curve of Yifan’s thigh as he hums along to whatever music he’s got playing over his headphones and looking out the window.  
  
It’s… it’s almost nice. Being this close to Sehun usually involves getting off somehow, so this kind of casual contact kind of — Sehun flattens his hand so he’s pressing his whole palm over the top of Yifan’s leg and Yifan swallows — it feels like something Sehun does every day (he definitely doesn’t), and a bit like Something More all at once.  
  
The other members in the van are chattering away, all trying to pretend they aren’t jittery with the nerves that usually come with the particular brand of aggressive fans that come see them at the airport, but Sehun seems content to stay quiet, nestled between Yifan and the window. It really is nice — so nice, Yifan is afraid he’s going to get used to it.  
  
The airport is a nightmare, as usual, Sehun’s fingers twisting into the hem of Yifan’s red sweater to keep himself from stumbling in the crowd, and Yifan tries not to think about it, he really does. But every time he feels Sehun’s fingernails scrape at his spine through the knit, his heart pulses in his throat, hard enough that Yifan’s surprised the fans can’t see it through the lenses of their cameras.  
  
At the gate, Yifan fiddles with his ticket and passport between his fingers. He’s got the beginning of a hangnail on one of them and he forces himself not to pick at it.  
  
Sehun’s chin digs into Yifan’s shoulder when he comes over, looking down at the paper in Yifan’s hands.  
  
“Hmm,” he says, “we’re in the same row.” Yifan can feel the vibrations of Sehun’s throat against his shoulder blade.  
  
The idea of sitting next to Sehun for a few hours, with no one else to bother them, settles under Yifan’s skin, hot and simmering, as Sehun’s breath brushes past his cheek. It feels kind of like a secret.  
  
The warmth against Yifan’s back disappears when Sehun moves off to talk to some of the others as they mill around, waiting to board, and the cool air bleeding through his shirt makes Yifan shiver.  
  
When he finally walks on the plane, though, mixed in with the rest of the passengers as they stow their luggage, the seat next to Sehun is already occupied.  
  
“I told Jongin you could switch,” Sehun says, sounding bored and tugging at the edges of his blazer so it won’t wrinkle during the flight.  
  
Jongin makes a pleading face up at Yifan. “If you sit next to Chanyeol instead, I might actually be able to get some sleep.”  
  
The circles under Jongin’s eyes seem darker than usual and his mouth is curving downwards, like it’s too much effort to smile. Yifan glances back a few rows to where Chanyeol is wriggling in his seat, trying to buckle his seatbelt, elbows jabbing out haphazardly. “Sure,” he says, trying to sound casual, and not like the way Sehun is too busy watching them load the luggage into the plane to look him in the eye bothers him. “That’s cool.”  
  
He waits for another beat, until the person waiting in the aisle behind him lets out an impatient sigh, but Sehun’s gaze is fixed on the window, lip trapped between his teeth.  
  
“‘Bye,” Jongin mumbles, slumping onto his neck pillow and shutting his eyes.  
  
Chanyeol grins at Yifan when he sits down, folding his legs into the small space between seats, and Yifan makes himself smile in return, buckling himself in and tipping his head back so that it can touch the too-short headrest during take-off. He curls his fingers into the kit cuffs of his sweater as the plane accelerates down the runway, nose tipping up, ready to glide into the air.  
  
It’s not like Sehun hasn’t done stuff like that before, always seeming to prefer the other member’s company, socially, at least. But, perhaps a little foolishly, Yifan had hoped things were changing between them.  
  
Nausea is rolling around in his stomach, and he swallows as the wheels of the plane leave the ground, not able to decide if the sudden sickness is from turbulence or the unexpected sting of Sehun’s rejection.  
  
%  
  
He’s seen Sehun in his school uniform a few times last year, just in passing when Sehun had rushed in to practice or rap lessons after class, the same gaudy yellow blazer over a polo as Jongin had worn last year, and it really serves no other purpose than to remind the other members to tease Sehun about not having finished school yet.  
  
It’s a little routine they have, where Jongdae says something about Sehun looking like he’s just stepped out of a manhwa and Jongin flicks the lapels of Sehun’s jacket as Sehun tugs at his tie and waves them all off so he can go change. Now that Sehun’s graduated, Yifan doesn’t really give it a second thought anymore.  
  
The uniform sweater Sehun likes to wear around the dorm sometimes isn’t his. It’s a little too tight across the shoulders — not in the same way a lot of Sehun’s clothes do these days, too small for his still-growing body — and Yifan overhears Sehun tell Lu Han that he and his high school best friend had traded school sweaters after graduation for when they missed each other and couldn’t meet up.  
  
The idea seems oddly sentimental for Sehun, even if Yifan knows that Sehun is more thoughtful than the image he puts out, until he gathers, from little throwaway comments and jokes, that Sehun’s best friend from high school is a girl. The other members all seem at least semi-aware of her existence, and Yifan remembers that he was in Canada for Sehun’s graduation, when they might have had a chance to meet her, Jeongah.  
  
With Exo’s popularity and schedule over the past two years, none of them have had much time off to see their families and friends, and meeting up with a girl around Sehun’s same age under the radar of their fans would have been nearly impossible, even if she’s just a friend.  
  
Yifan tries not to give it too much thought. The sweater is canary yellow and short enough to show a strip of bare skin above the top of Sehun’s pants, and both aspects mean that it catches Yifan’s eye whenever Sehun wears it around. Which means Yifan ends up thinking about it kind of a lot.  
  
It’s been over a year and a half since Sehun’s graduation — a long time to wear a sweater for just a friend.  
  
It’s… possible. Sehun has this way with women, older women in particular, that seems to always get him what he wants. He’s tuned it up since they debuted and he’s grown into an adult, smoothed it out into to something less feminine and childlike and more boyish and cute. Something that catches people’s notice without getting him teased.  
  
It’s entirely possible that Sehun has some kind of … _thing_ with his best friend. Yifan tries not to feel sour about the fact that he might be acting as some kind of stand-in for an ex-classmate of Sehun’s that he’s never even _met_ (conveniently forgetting it was his own fault he was away in Canada during Sehun’s graduation) and instead ignores the thought entirely and definitely doesn’t ask the other members who _had_ met her what she’s like.  
  
Well, mostly.  
  
“Jeongah?” Junmyeon says, looking distractedly down at the scripts he’s got in his lap for the radio show he’s going to be on tomorrow. “You mean Sehun’s friend from school?”  
  
Yifan shrugs, trying to look nonchalant and probably failing because he’s 185 centimeters tall.  
  
“She’s…” He sets the papers in his hand down on the table. “You know how Sehun is,” Junmyeon says, and Yifan clears his throat in a way that could sound like agreement (even though he’s beginning to realize he doesn’t know how Sehun is at all) but still isn’t a lie because he really does needs to clear his throat. “He doesn’t really bother with people he doesn’t like. Jeongah seems to get him, I always thought, and that’s why they’re friends.”  
  
“Just friends?” Yifan asks, the question slipping out before he can stop it.  
  
Junmyeon opens his mouth to answer, looking curious, but before he can, Baekhyun comes tumbling into the living room, out of breath with laughter and a murderous-looking Kyungsoo hot on his trail.  
  
His Very Important Question left unanswered, Yifan backs off for a while, watching Sehun instead of trying to engage him, looking for clues.  
  
  
  
Yifan has halfway convinced himself that Sehun definitely has a secret girlfriend and he’s the other woman (man) in this scenario, when Sehun shows up at his room one afternoon, the arms of the borrowed yellow school sweater slightly too short, making his wrists show. Yifan pauses for a second, leaning against the door and scratching his head, because he’d been trying to take a nap, so he’s kind of groggy and doesn’t want to risk accidentally pissing Sehun off again.  
  
“Um,” he starts. “Hi?”  
  
“I thought I had Mandarin class after our interview today before recording tonight, but it turns out I don’t and earlier you mentioned you had the afternoon off…”  
  
Yifan had been up all night at the studio, trying to perfect things for the new album with their producer, and was taking the chance to grab a few extra hours of sleep between schedules.  
  
Sehun’s eyes skitter away from his face, down to his chest, and Yifan suddenly realizes he’s shirtless and crosses his arms over his chest, nodding blankly. He’d been having some kind of half-dream about tripping and falling in slow motion down some stairs in front of the fans, their cameras flashing. The feeling is hard to shake.  
  
Sehun waits for a beat, as though expecting Yifan to say something. “Are you going to let me in?”  
  
“Oh. Uh. Sure.” Yifan steps back, letting Sehun brush past him. The sweater is getting _really_ tight across his shoulders now that he's grown more — or maybe Sehun is tense for some reason?  
  
He looks kind of like that first time he’d taken of his pants for Yifan, like he’s toeing the rim of a cliff and trying to figure out if he’ll survive the fall.  
  
"Where's Jongdae?" Sehun asks, looking around the room as though he expects Jongdae to pop out from under one of the beds.  
  
"Vocal recording." Sehun turns around to lean against the desk, fingers fiddling with the hem of the yellow sweater, and it definitely seems like he's nervous. "So... what's up?" Yifan asks and Sehun's eyes flick up to his face and then back down.  
  
It's unnerving, because Sehun isn't like this with him, especially not when they're alone and the leader in him is worried that something is actually wrong.  
  
Maybe, Yifan thinks, feeling a little frantic, it’s his secret girlfriend, and Sehun is here to tell Yifan they can’t see each other anymore or something, because he could never be with a loose woman like him.  
  
Maybe Yifan needs to stop watching TV love-triangle dramas with Lu Han.  
  
“Did something happen during your recording session??” Yifan tries instead.  
  
It’s almost a relief when Sehun scoffs. “Everything’s fine, hyung. Stop worrying.” He drops his hands from his sweater and reaches out to tug at one of Yifan’s arms, smirking. “You look ridiculous with your hair like that.”  
  
Yifan reaches up, and sure enough, he can feel how his hair is sticking straight up on one side of his head. He tries to flatten it, and Sehun laughs, eyes crinkling up as he pulls Yifan’s arm down. “Idiot,” he says, before pulling Yifan close enough to kiss him.  
  
The knit of Sehun’s sweater rubs against Yifan’s bare chest and his hand tickles the back of Yifan’s neck as it twists into his hair. It’s strange, how Sehun’s mouth can be so hard when he frowns and then soft, like this, falling open against Yifan’s as their bodies press together.  
  
It doesn’t matter if Sehun has a secret girlfriend from high school, Yifan decides, because Sehun is here, squirming impatiently in Yifan’s arms.  
  
Sehun doesn’t seem tense anymore, making a little sound when Yifan fists the back of his sweater, low enough that Yifan can feel the vibrations in his own chest, right down to his cock. It’s almost ridiculous, that something so tiny should have him so ready, but Sehun is licking at the roof of his mouth, making more sounds and pulling at Yifan’s hair, and Yifan wants — he wants —  
  
Sehun’s hands don’t leave his hair even when Yifan drops to his knees, but when Yifan’s fingers fumble with the button of his uniform pants, he kind of sighs, like he’d been afraid Yifan didn’t want him or something.  
  
Yifan pauses. That feeling in his chest is welling again, pressing against his ribcage, and he lets his face fall against Sehun’s stomach.  
  
Yifan takes a few breaths, cheek rubbing against the canary yellow sweater, and Sehun’s hands kind of go soft in his hair, brushing through it instead of grabbing. The sweater smells like laundry and a little bit of expensive cologne some of the fans probably gave him, but also like Sehun’s left it lying on his floor for too long, and the idea helps ground him, muffles the anxious fluttering under his ribs so he can feel how hard Sehun is under his hands instead.  
  
And if Sehun is going to let Yifan blow him while he’s wearing that stupid borrowed sweater, then Yifan is going to do it, possible secret girlfriend or not.  
  
It’s easy after that, to pull on Sehun’s zipper, let the uniform pants slide down Sehun’s legs and pool on the floor. The panties today are bright yellow like the sweater. He likes how Sehun is randomly vain about things like his underwear, but will let the hair stylist dye his hair ten different colors without even caring.  
  
Yifan runs his palms over them, the little bow catching his fingers as he pushes the shirt fabric up to uncover Sehun’s stomach. He mouths at Sehun’s bellybutton, dips his tongue in, rubbing Sehun’s dick until the head is peeking over the lace. The skin is salty and warm, muscles beneath trembling under his tongue.  
  
Yifan chances a look up, and Sehun’s staring back down, lower lip sucked into his mouth and cheeks pink, and Yifan laps at the crown of Sehun’s cock where it’s bare, breaking eye-contact so he can push the rest of the lace away and suck him into his mouth.  
  
He hasn’t sucked off very many guys, but Yifan thinks he likes the sounds Sehun makes the best, not much more than little choked gasps, like it feels so good he can’t even take a proper breath, and Yifan’s really starting to get into it when suddenly Sehun pushes him off.  
  
“Um?” Yifan gets out, wiping the spit off the corners of his mouth with the back of his hand, instead of _what the hell???_ or _it’s because I’m the other woman, isn’t it?_ like he wants to.  
  
“I was thinking,” Sehun says, voice sounding a little strained.  
  
“You’re _thinking_ right now?”  
  
“I’ve _been_ thinking,” Sehun corrects, face going from pink to an embarrassed red, “about the thing… you said last time?”  
  
“What?”  
  
Sehun sighs like Yifan is being incredibly dense, which he thinks is kind of unfair because it’s kind of hard hard to make the transition between having a dick down your throat to talking. On the other hand, Sehun looks a lot less nervous now that he’s rolling his eyes, so maybe he’ll say what he actually means.  
  
“About fucking me for real,” he mumbles, and Yifan remembers saying that. He ducks his head and swallows. “About having sex with me.”  
  
Sehun’s cock is still hanging there in front of his face, slick with spit. He suddenly thinks about how Sehun had felt around his fingers, about what his face had looked like when he came, and the fact that Sehun is actually _asking_ him for this is kind of amazing. This is definitely not what he’d expected when he opened the door to Sehun’s face twenty minutes ago, and Yifan is kind of reeling from it.  
  
“Right,” he says, catching his breath. “Okay.”  
  
As he gets up, Yifan’s feet catch on the carpet and he has to use Sehun’s shoulder to steady himself. Sehun snorts, but unlike that first time in the kitchen doorway, it’s Yifan that presses his lips to Sehun’s, reaching up with a hand to cradle the back of his head.  
  
Sehun’s breath is warm on Yifan’s cheeks when they part, dark lashes curving above his cheek bones, and his fingers brush down Yifan’s spine to the top of his sweatpants. Grasping the waistband in his fists, Sehun opens his eyes and uses his grip to tug Yifan towards the bed.  
  
He’s smiling when Yifan settles above him, knees on either side of Sehun’s lace-covered hips, and his mouth sucks at a spot on the underside of Yifan’s chin while Yifan grasps blindly for the lube under his mattress.  
  
Sehun gasps against his throat as his underwear is pulled totally out of the way, going limp against the sheets as Yifan stretches him. It feels just as good, maybe even better than he remembered, and Yifan strokes along the inside of Sehun’s thigh with his free hand, keeping a careful eye on Sehun’s expressions until Sehun is wet and hot around his fingers, squirming down against his hand.  
  
Sehun’s eyes snap open when Yifan pulls away to grab a condom and shuck his pants off. He’s hard enough without any help but Yifan gives himself a few tugs just to calm the heat in his stomach, and Sehun is watching, lips parted and tongue licking out, as though he wishes he could take Yifan into his mouth.  
  
The yellow sweater is still on, rumpled up over his stomach. It’s sort of obscene, that Sehun is wearing part of his old high school uniform, and he’s looking at Yifan like he’s burning up inside. Like he wants Yifan to screw him into oblivion.  
  
Yifan pauses before he pushes in, catching Sehun’s eyes and taking one of his hands in his own. “Yeah?” he asks, just in case, because this is important.  
  
This is something Yifan really doesn’t want to screw up.  
  
Sehun nods, hair mussed against the pillow as it rubs, and grips Yifan’s hand tight. “Yeah.”  
  
The slide inside is slow, and Sehun hisses, back arching and chest rubbing against Yifan’s as he bottoms out, hips flush with the backs of Sehun’s thighs. Yifan can’t tell if he’s the one that’s trembling. Mouthing blindly at his face, catching his chin and then the corner of Yifan’s mouth, Sehun’s breath hitches between them. He shifts a little and moans, something that sounds on the edge of pain. Yifan presses kisses to his cheeks and along the line of his lips until Sehun squeezes his hand again.  
  
“It’s okay,” he says, breathless against Yifan’s mouth. “Do it.”  
  
Sehun feels so good around him, but its more than that. It’s the way he surges up into Yifan and how he throws back his head so Yifan can see his throat swallowing, gasping for air. Sehun in his arms like this, for the first time, is a moment suspended in time, tattooed on Yifan’s insides, something he’ll never be able to wash away.  
  
The skin of Sehun’s neck is so incredibly pale, and maybe another time, Yifan will lean down and drag his teeth across Sehun’s pulse, mark up Sehun’s throat with pink scrapes and maybe a hickey or two, but right now it’s perfect the way it is, flawless and smooth, right down to where his collar bones disappear under his collar.  
  
“Fuck, _hyung_ ,” Sehun grinds out, nails cutting into Yifan’s shoulder blades harder and harder every time their hips meet. Yifan tries to say something back, to tell Sehun to touch himself because he can feel his orgasm creeping up his thighs and twisting up in his stomach, too soon and not soon enough all at the same time, but his tongue is heavy in his mouth, and he’s not even sure what language is coming out.  
  
Sehun seems to get the message, though, snaking a hand down between them to jerk himself off. His knuckles brush the skin of Yifan’s belly with each stroke and he’s whimpering in Yifan’s ear, body wound up like a rubber band about to snap. Yifan uses his grip on Sehun’s knee to pull his leg up, letting him slide in just that much deeper, and Sehun spills over his hand with a long moan that cracks in the middle and tugs at something too high up in Yifan’s chest to be arousal.  
  
He catches Sehun’s eyes right after, still hazy when Sehun opens them again, but it’s almost like they’re shining up at Yifan with something he can’t name. Sehun digs his fingernails into Yifan’s back again, drags them up, and the tension in Yifan’s stomach bursts.  
  
The last thing he sees before he throws back his head and comes is Sehun’s mouth making the shape of his name.  
  
%  
  
“I can’t believe we defiled your _school sweater_.”  
  
It’s been a while, Yifan’s not quite sure how long, since he pulled out of Sehun and stashed the used condom deep down in the trashcan in the corner, where hopefully no one else would be able to find it. When he’d turned around to go back to his bed, Sehun was looking at him through hooded eyes, and the picture he made, spread out on Yifan’s sheets with half his uniform still on, come staining the front of his yellow sweater, and his hair rubbed wild by the pillow, was so debauched Yifan felt punched in the gut.  
  
There’s still something about it that buzzes under his skin, and he’s not sure whether it’s a sort of uneasy pride at how content Sehun looked, blinking slowly at him, and tugging him back down onto the bed by the arm, or something else, maybe because of how Sehun nuzzled his face into Yifan’s shoulder, sniffling and possibly mumbling his name.  
  
Either way, Sehun seems to find the dribbled stains on the stomach of his sweater to be much less awful than Yifan. “I don’t know,” he says, thoughtful. “I think you might have improved it. Besides, it’s my former school sweater.”  
  
“Still makes me feel like a dirty old man,” Yifan mutters and Sehun snorts in his ear. Yifan doesn’t ask what the real owner of the sweater might think. He doesn’t want to hear Sehun’s answer.  
  
“It doesn’t matter. Whatever gets the job done, right? Don’t worry, I won’t tell Jeongah what really happened to her sweater.” Sehun is joking, but the words hit Yifan kind of hard. He rolls over and tries not to frown up at the ceiling.  
  
Sehun told him before that this didn’t mean anything. He could have five secret girlfriends with five traded sweaters that he wears on rotation, and that would be none of his business. Yifan is really trying not to be an idiot.  
  
“Hey.” Sehun’s finger pokes him in the side, just hard enough to make him squirm. Yifan catches Sehun’s hand to protect himself, and turns to look at Sehun. He’s got his lip sucked into his mouth again. It makes Yifan want to lean in and kiss him until Sehun’s mouth goes soft and plush underneath his own.  
  
Only he’s not quite sure where this leaves them and if Sehun is going to push him away again, Yifan would rather put off the sting of rejection until after the post-orgasmic euphoria has cleared from his brain.  
  
Sure enough, Sehun is wriggling away from him, untangling their hands even as he’s smiling. Something in Yifan’s stomach drops.  
  
“I’m going to shower. I’ve got to be back at the studio soon, I think.” Sehun says, and the way he walks to the hallway door without putting his pants on, pale butt and thighs bare to Yifan’s eyes, is probably meant to stand as a tease, or maybe a little show, but Yifan’s throat hurts when he tries to swallow, and when the door to the bathroom closes and he can hear the faint splash of water against tile, Yifan lets himself draw in a shuddering breath.  
  
Just because Yifan thinks you have to trust someone to sleep with them doesn’t mean Sehun does too.  
  
Just because Yifan knows some of Sehun’s secrets doesn’t mean he’s been let in.  
  
He pushes himself up and runs a hand through his hair, trying to tame it even though he knows it’s a lost cause. His sweatpants are pooled on the floor next to the bed, and he pulls them on before picking up Sehun’s jeans and folding them carefully, smoothing out any creases and draping them over one arm.  
  
Sehun is humming to himself in the shower when Yifan opens the bathroom door.  
  
“Hyung, whose shampoo is in the pink bottle?” Sehun asks from behind the divider, when he hears Yifan come in.  
  
“Zitao’s.”  
  
“Oh good, I didn’t want to accidentally use any of yours. Your hair always smells like the kind of perfume a middle school girl would use.” Sehun’s voice carries over the sound of the water and Yifan can imagine him soaping up his hair and smirking into the spray.  
  
“Mine’s too expensive for you to use, maknae,” he reprimands, setting Sehun’s pants on the counter. “Your jeans are out here when you want them.”  
  
Sehun hums to show he’s heard, and Yifan doesn’t let himself get undressed and join him, doesn’t pretend that any of this has meant anything.  
  
 _Whatever gets the job done_ , Sehun had said.  
  
The mirror across from Yifan is fogged up from the steam, and Yifan is thankful because he doesn’t think he’d be able to look his own reflection in the eye.  
  
He ducks back out of the bathroom and goes into the kitchen. A glass of cold water from the fridge helps smother the burn of whatever keeps bubbling up in his chest and by the time Sehun comes out, Yifan feels fine, leaning up against the counter like he and Sehun do this every day. Like this was just another _fuck_.  
  
Even hearing the word in his head makes Yifan wince and his stomach roll.  
  
“I’ll have to think of a way to get this dry-cleaned, I think,” Sehun says, gesturing down at the mess on the sweater in his hands. He must have grabbed another shirt from his room, something dark and long-sleeved enough to cover his wrists.  
  
Yifan bobs his head slowly, tapping his fingers on the glass in his hand.  
  
Sehun’s hair is still wet, pushed messily out of his eyes, and it makes him look younger, more wide-eyed. Yifan’s hand tightens around the glass, knuckles going white.  
  
“So,” Sehun says. Yifan is pretty sure the pink tinge in Sehun’s cheeks is from his hot shower, even though it makes Yifan think of earlier, when Sehun had seemed so nervous and he had run soft fingers through Yifan’s hair as Yifan pressed his face into Sehun’s stomach. “I guess… “  
  
He kind of looks like he wants to walk over to Yifan or something, but he doesn’t, hovering in the doorway, and Yifan has to remind himself that Sehun said it didn’t matter to keep himself from going over instead.  
  
It’s better this way. Safer.  
  
Yifan still really doesn’t want to screw this up.  
  
Sehun sighs. “I guess I’ll see you later?” he says eventually, turning toward the front door. The end of it goes up a little, almost like a question, and the uncertainty of it tugs at Yifan’s heart. Even if Sehun used Zitao’s shampoo, Yifan can still smell the cologne he’d been wearing from across the kitchen. He wonders if it’s rubbed off on his bedsheets too, and can’t decide if that would be a good or a bad thing.  
  
“Yeah,” Yifan says. The glass has gone warm from the heat of his palm and the exhaustion from being pulled back and forth is weighing down his shoulders. “Later.”  
  
%  
  
“So like,” Chanyeol says around his mouthful of fried chicken, “what’s with you and Sehun?”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
Chanyeol stares at him for a moment, eyes round. “I mean, what’s with you and Sehun?”  
  
Trying to be nonchalant, Yifan shrugs with one shoulder. “You know how maknae is — “  
  
“Look, I know chemically, things are different for girls, or whatever,” Chanyeol interrupts and Yifan goes from _what the hell is Chanyeol talking about??_ to _holy shIT, he knows about the panties_ in less than 2.4 seconds. Luckily, Chanyeol isn’t finished. “But when a guy has his metaphorical cherry popped, it’s not that hard to tell.” He waggles his eyebrows meaningfully. “Sehun’s definitely got a spring in his step today.”  
  
Yifan inhales in the chicken he’s chewing like a surprised vacuum and it takes him the next two minutes to cough it back up. When he can finally draw a clear breath, Yifan looks up at Chanyeol and wipes the tears of asphyxiation from his eyes.  
  
Chanyeol’s got his eyebrows raised so high they disappear beneath his fringe. “You okay?”  
  
“Yeah,” Yifan says, gulping down some water. “Yeah, I’m good.”  
  
“Good. Junmyeon hyung would have a lot of extra work if we were down a leader,” Chanyeol says, nodding seriously.  
  
Yifan frowns. “Hey — “  
  
“So, Sehun,” Chanyeol cuts in again, “and you?” He pushes out his lips like he does when he’s thinking really hard about something, and adds hastily, as though to reassure Yifan, “Don’t worry, the others don’t know.”  
  
“I don’t… know what you want me to say.” Yifan flounders for a moment, sending up a prayer of thanks that Chanyeol isn’t talking about the whole panty thing (mostly because he doesn’t even want to _imagine_ the look on Sehun’s face if someone else had found out), even though this feels just as embarrassing for him. He tries playing dumb. “If this is about last time, with me ‘doing dickish things to Sehun’ or whatever — “  
  
“If by ‘doing dickish things to Sehun’, you mean like, actual dicks. Like, you know.” Chanyeol makes an obscene hand gesture and Yifan is truly horrified that this is happening to him. Unfortunately, Chanyeol doesn’t seem like he’s going to let it go, his big eyes filled with curiosity. “That’s good for you guys, though, right? You weren’t that close before. What happened?”  
  
Yifan shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter.”  
  
Setting down his food, Chanyeol gives Yifan A Look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”  
  
Chanyeol has this terrible habit of being really observant when Yifan doesn’t want him to be and it makes it hard for Yifan to talk his way out of things. (At least Chanyeol isn’t like Kyungsoo and Jongdae, who would gossip about this across the practice room during breaks until Yifan snapped and palmed their faces like basketballs, or something.)  
  
“It’s just — “ Even if he wanted to, he wouldn’t know how to explain what’s going on. “Nothing,” Yifan settles on eventually. Just thinking about it has his shoulders sagging. “We’re not close at all. He didn’t even tell me he has a secret girlfriend.”  
  
“What? Sehun doesn’t have a girlfriend.”  
  
“I said it’s a _secret_ girlfriend.”  
  
Chanyeol looks skeptical, but he must see something in Yifan’s face, because he doesn’t push any further, turning the conversation to news about his sister’s new job and Yifan tries to get the tension to leave his shoulders.  
  
For some reason that Yifan absolutely hates, it feels good to hear that Chanyeol thinks he and Sehun have gotten closer, but there’s a strange lump in Yifan’s throat, because he knows the truth is they’ve only grown closer physically. Nothing else has really changed between them. Sehun keeps shutting him out and Yifan always feels like no matter how he tries, he’s slowly but surely screwing everything up.  
  
That night, during rehearsal, Sehun looks winded, moving like he’s a little sore. Yifan wonders if it’s because of what they did together the day before and swallows the guiltily thickness that’s gathered in the back of his mouth.  
  
“Here,” he says during their short break, holding out a fresh water bottle to Sehun as he crouches down next to one of the mirrors.  
  
Sehun looks at Yifan like he’s grown an extra arm and holds up the half-empty water bottle in his hand. “I’m fine.”  
  
Yifan wants to sit down next to him, reach around to knead the aching muscles of Sehun’s lower back and brush the sweaty hair away from Sehun’s forehead, but something about Sehun’s face is so completely closed off that Yifan’s throat feels dry and nervous.  
  
Turning back around, Yifan walks to the other side of the practice studio, pressing the cool surface of the water bottle to his sweaty neck, and listens to Yixing and Lu Han cracking jokes even while their voices crack with exhaustion.  
  
In the mirror, Yifan can see Sehun talking to Junmyeon as he combs the hair out of his face, the corners of his eyes wrinkling with a smile at something Junmyeon’s saying.  
  
Whatever he and Sehun have shared physically doesn’t matter during times like this, Yifan realizes, because even after everything, he and Sehun still aren’t friends.  
  
%  
  
The issue is, of course, that Yifan really likes the physical stuff a whole lot.  
  
Judging by the way Sehun shoves him up against the bathroom wall and pulls Yifan’s cock out of his sweatpants without even asking, eyes hungry and wet and his mouth already hanging open, Sehun enjoys it too.  
  
“What are you — “ He can actually feel Sehun _grinning_ around his cock, and Yifan fists his hands in his own shirt because he can’t risk messing up Sehun’s hair when they have to head back to practice so soon. Sehun hollows his cheeks and hums again, a tune Yifan almost recognizes through the fog clouding his brain. “Are you seriously… humming MAMA right now?”  
  
Pulling off with a pop, Sehun reaches to cradle Yifan’s balls and looks entirely too pleased with himself. “It’s getting you off, isn’t it?”  
  
“I don’t,” Yifan says, voice strained as Sehun sucks him back down, pulling Yifan even deeper into his mouth with a hand on his butt, “think that’s what’s doing it.”  
  
Sehun lets Yifan come in his mouth, and then wipes his lips on the back of his hand after he stands up to spit in the sink behind them.  
  
Once Yifan’s sweatpants are back in place, he reaches for Sehun awkwardly. “Can I…?”  
  
“Nah,” Sehun says, waving him off. “I just wanted to.”  
  
Sehun’s lips are rubbed raw, swollen and red, and he seems to hesitate for a moment before leaning in for a kiss. It’s quick, barely enough time for Yifan’s eyes to flutter shut and Sehun to rest his hand on Yifan’s waist, but Sehun sighs a little when the kiss is finished. To Yifan, it’s surprisingly intimate.  
  
That strange feeling is pressing at his ribs again, in danger of bubbling over.  
  
Sehun gives his hip a squeeze and blinks a few times, expression clearing. “Besides, now you owe me for later.”  
  
Right, Yifan reminds himself, taking a step back and out of Sehun’s reach.  
  
Just another fuck.  
  
Maybe if he thinks the word enough, it’ll stop making him feel so sick.  
  
He follows Sehun out of the bathroom, and really, they should probably try to be a little less obvious, but Yifan is too busy trying to convince himself that this Thing with Sehun has been a sequence of traded favors between bandmates.  
  
None of the other members notice anything strange anyway, the rest of them embroiled in a heated rock-paper-scissors tournament in the far corner when Yifan and Sehun come back into the practice room.  
  
Sehun saunters over to the others, draping himself all over Lu Han and whining “Hyungggggg~” to the group at large. They all coo over him, reaching out to ruffle Sehun’s hair as the choreographer calls for them to get back to work. He ducks their touches, but Yifan can tell by the smile on Sehun’s face that he enjoys the attention.  
  
That night Yifan tosses and turns in his bed, trying and failing to get a few hours of sleep before they head to the airport tomorrow. Practice had gone on for hours after the break, until their reflection in the mirrors had been blurry to Yifan’s tired eyes.  
  
Still, each time Yifan is about to drift off, he remembers the way Jongin slung his arm around Sehun’s shoulders to pull him close, or how Junmyeon had reached up to teasingly flick the hair out of Sehun’s eyes. It’s nothing they haven’t been doing since probably before Yifan ever even met them, but something hot and acidic burns in his throat, keeping him awake.  
  
Yifan thinks it might be jealousy.  
  
%


End file.
